Term: 8 March (Sat.) 2025 – 11 May (Mon.) 2025
Open: 10 am – 5 pm (Last admission at 4:30 pm)
Closed: on Mondays, except for 5 May
Yamatane Museum of Art official website: https://www.yamatane-museum.jp/
Exhibition Overview
Spring, when the sunlight begins warming our world and flowers bud: it is a joyously heartwarming season. And what is especially exhilarating is the cherry trees in bloom. This spring, our museum is displaying all its marvelous cherry blossom paintings, all together, for an exhibition that is like being invited to a cherry-blossom-viewing party, inside an art museum.
Matsuoka Eikyū, Court Ladies in Spring Clothing, in the Spring Sunlight, 1917, Color on Silk; Yamatane Museum of Art
The beauty when the cherry blossoms are at their peak and the transience when their petals scatter have long fascinated the people of Japan. In the world of the arts, cherry trees have, for centuries, been celebrated in poetry, used as motifs for clothing and furnishings, and depicted, repeatedly and enthusiastically, in paintings. The cherry tree is a subject that many modern and contemporary nihonga artists have also addressed in work that presents a variety of modes of expression, reflecting each artist’s individuality and aesthetic sense.
Okumura Togyū, Cherry Blossoms at Daigo-ji Temple, 1972, Color on Paper; Yamatane Museum of Art
This exhibition is an opportunity to view a host of cherry blossom masterpieces filled with their artists’ creativity, including Matsuoka Eikyū’s Court Ladies in Spring Clothing, in the Spring Sunlight, which court ladies enjoying the cherry blossoms, depicted in vivid colors, Okumura Togyū’s Cherry Blossoms at Daigo-ji Temple, which depicts those flowers in gentle colors at the Sanbōin in Kyoto’s Daigo-ji Temple. They are joined by, among others, Kawai Gyokudō’s, Spring Breeze, Spring Stream, which depicts mountain cherries blooming in a ravine through which the clear waters of a stream flow, and Hayami Gyoshū, Cherry Blossoms in the Dark, which shows us, in close up, lustrous blossoms in the dusky twilight.
Kawai Gyokudō, Spring Breeze, Spring Stream, 1940, Color on Silk; Yamatane Museum of Art
Kobayashi Kokei, Cherry Blossoms c. 1933, Color on Silk; Yamatane Museum of Art
We hope you will enjoy the cherry blossom viewing and savor the arrival of spring at this exhibition, where richly individual paintings of cherry trees are in full bloom.
*All works are from the Yamatane Museum of Art collection unless otherwise noted.
*Approximately 60 works in total are to be displayed.
Term: 8 March (Sat.) 2025 – 11 May (Mon.) 2025
Open: 10 am – 5 pm (Last admission at 4:30 pm)
Closed: on Mondays, except for 5 May
Yamatane Museum of Art official website: https://www.yamatane-museum.jp/
